FAT BLACK BEES

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

A common bumble bee found in the Appalachians. Photo: Kelly Graninger/USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab via Popular Science.

A May morning
More like January.
I sit on the bench in front of the house
Brooding about the unseasonable weather
And looming climate catastrophe,
Wondering what it will mean
For our children and grandchildren,
For the children and grandchildren
Of all humanity.
Wondering if we will be able
To overcome the depredations
Of the mad, greedy bastards
Pumping ppms into the atmosphere
Day and night without pause,
With lethal, sociopathic glee,
Setting loose the wild dogs
Of hurricane and tornado, flood and fire
In order to stuff their greasy pockets
With mere money,
Not much good when everyone’s gone.
Too late is almost here.
Will we beat the carbon clock
Or will we all be Ishis,
The last of our tribes?
And what about these fat black bees
I’m watching right now as they traffic
In the rosemary and jasmine
By the front porch steps?
Will they be able to adapt
To some fierce, inhospitable new normal?
Or will they follow countless other species
Out the door?
I dream of a fine May morning
A hundred or a thousand years from now
When our descendants
Will be lazing
In hammocks and lawn chairs
Appreciating the thrum and buzz
Of apian activity
As the heirs of these earnest little toilers
Arrive at the job site—
Blossoming rosemary bushes and jasmine vines—
Wide awake, scrubbed and shiny,
Ready for work.


Buff Whitman-Bradley's poems have appeared in many print and online journals. His most recent books are To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World and Cancer Cantata. With his wife Cynthia, he produced the award-winning documentary film Outside In and, with the MIRC film collective, made the film Por Que Venimos. His interviews with soldiers refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan were made into the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California.

CARBON THOUGHTS

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

Above the broad green expanse of the marsh
Dozens of swifts
Dart and veer and cavort with anarchic abandon
Like a corps de ballet gone slightly unhinged.
Red-shouldered piccolo birds
Ornament the air
With the bright clear notes of their piping
And a lone egret lopes past a pond
Just above the water.
Here on land
Countless pill bugs
Full of purpose and gravitas
Hump back and forth across the trail
Like law clerks bearing weighty briefs to court
While box elder bugs keep backing into each other
For anonymous sex.
The rumor making its way
Among the long bright green grasses
The clovers and the tiny pimpernels
Is that the massive winter storms
Inundating us this year
With triple the normal precipitation
Likely a result of human-caused climate change
Are at last headed out of town
And the spring weather that's on its way
Is certain to stick around for a while.
So we join with the birds and the bugs
In welcoming the new season
And calling for the carbon grubbing
Glassy-eyed lucre-addicted climate manglers
To rejoin life's great extended family
And keep the oil in the ground.


Buff Whitman-Bradley's poetry has appeared in many print and online journals, including Atlanta Review, Bryant Literary Review, Concho River Review, Crannog, december, Hawai'i Review, Pinyon, Rockhurst Review, Solstice, Third Wednesdayand others. He has published several collections of poems, most recently, To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World. His interviews with soldiers who refused to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan became the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California with his wife Cynthia.

THREE EGRETS

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

As we stand outside the bank
Holding signs
To protest profiteering
From the ravaging of our environment
Three egrets fly past just above us
And over the maniacal traffic
Of the freeway
Heading to a small marshy area
By the frontage road on the other side.
Three egrets that remind us in this moment
Of our immutable interdependence –
Animal plant stone
Earth water air.
Three egrets
Whose cells, like our own, thrum
With the ancient music of all that is.
Three egrets that know nothing
About carbon emissions and methane plumes
About melting glaciers and dying oceans.
Three egrets that know nothing
About parts per million and tipping points
And the dire predictions
Of climate scientists.
Three egrets that know nothing
About mass mobilizations
To resist the slashers and gougers and despoilers
Nothing about blockades and lock downs
And urgent uproarious disobedience
To disrupt business as usual –
But that is not the egrets' work,
It is ours.

Buff Whitman-Bradley's poetry has appeared in many print and online journals, including Atlanta Review, Bryant Literary Review, Concho River Review, Crannog, december, Hawai'i Review, Pinyon, Rockhurst Review, Solstice, Third Wednesdayand others. He has published several collections of poems, most recently, To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World. His interviews with soldiers who refused to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan became the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California with his wife Cynthia.

CALL IT DENIAL

by Gil Hoy

“The rainfall numbers are staggering. But the bigger picture scope and human perspective on the summer flood of 2014 is even more gripping.” --Minnesota Public Radio, June 25, 2014. Image source: CBS

The exhaust from a car can kill you.

I saw a giddy fly knocked for
a loop the other day when it
got too close to a tail pipe,

Just dropped to the ground
like a stone and didn't
move anymore.

And I thought flies were
supposed to be tough

don't they like to eat
rotting garbage?

can’t they lift
a hundred times their weight?

Those carbon emissions
must really be toxic

good thing that most of it
just floats up into the air.

But I did see some
of the world’s glaciers
and a lot of our sea ice

melting as temps rise,

and the weather seems
really strange as of late---

with all those tornados, grapefruit
hail, 100-year floods and all.

Heard that the penguins in
Antarctica aren't breeding as much,

that more snow and rain
are getting other animals
to move from their homes,

and that more insects on
the earth are getting those
spruce trees all chewed up.

And look what’s coming:

sea levels rising---watch out
beach homes---stronger hurricanes
and storms, more floods and

drought, some diseases will
spread, ecosystems will disappear---

But what really caught my eye
yesterday was the dejected look

on the sun's frowning face

when someone mentioned global warming.

It reminded me of the proud
American Indian on his horse

in that commercial from a while back---

he was weeping and looking
at our trash blowing around,

remembering his world as it used to be.


Gil Hoy received a B.A in Philosophy from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a law degree from the University of Virginia. Gil also is an elected member of the Brookline, MA Democratic Town Committee, and served as a Brookline Selectman for 12 years. Gil studied poetry at Boston University, and started writing his own poetry in February of this year. His poems have since been published in Soul Fountain, The New Verse News, The Story Teller Magazine, and Eye On Life Magazine. Gil is married, with three children, and lives in Brookline, MA.

THE PRESS SECRETARY FORGETS HIS LINES

by Judith Terzi

President Obama said Friday that White House press secretary Jay Carney will be stepping down from his job and be replaced by deputy Josh Earnest. ‘It's been an amazing experience,’ Carney said after Obama's announcement. ‘Just so fulfilling’.”  --USA Today, May 30, 2014

Yes, Michelle and B went out for pizza. Yes,
macaroni. They're in Baltimore. That's

where my mother was born. Well, really,
she was born in Annapolis; her father

worried sick she'd marry a sailor. We're
fundamentally all from Baltimore,

aren't we? We are all on the same page. Even
Vlad. He flew in last night. Staying

in the spare closet. I mean closest bedroom
to the rest of the O's. Yes, he can.

He can recite couplets from the Rubaiyat. He's
a real gadabout from Siberia to the gulf

stream waters, from D.C. to Donetsk. Yes,
I believe he believes that this land

is his land, folks. Yes, two-thirds of Americans
fundamentally believe in didactic melting.

Yes, I believe that at the end of the day, we're all
on the same page at the end of the day.

No, man, I don't believe we've ever met
a Talisman close up in Baltimore. No,

no, I don't believe in direct talk with anyone.
I've lost my water bottle. Does anyone

happen to have a jug of bread, a loaf of wine?
A bow-wow? My water bottle walked off

with Joe. Slipped down the neck of a crane.
My keychain has disappeared, too. If you

see one with rhinestones and an owl and a million
keys, bend down and pick it up. No, no,

no, no pussy cat. Yes, I believe there's a recent
recall on carbon emissions. Yes, over

a million first-time visitors to the website over
the weekend. Now that's a real rhinestone.


Judith Terzi is a poet living in Pasadena, California. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Centrifugal Eye, Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke: Erotic Poems (Tupelo), Pacific Coast Poetry Series' Los Angeles Poetry Anthology (Beyond Baroque), TheRaintown Review, and elsewhere. Her latest chapbook from Finishing Line is Ghazal for a Chambermaid. A former high school French teacher, she also taught English at California State University, Los Angeles, as well as in Algiers, Algeria.